IDSA publishes a selection of peer-reviewed academic education papers each year. These are collected during a community-wide open call period when design educators and practitioners submit materials for review by a group of judges serving on IDSA’s Academic Jury. The program also helps provide content for the annual Education Symposium, where some authors are invited to present their work from the stage to a live audience. To view the full Education Papers jury please visit meet the jury page.
Fostering A Culture Of Creativity Through Transdisciplinary Education
This paper describes a Social Entrepreneurship course taught during the Fall 2014 semester at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). With most of its students identifying as either business or design majors, the course evolved into a truly transdisciplinary course.
Author: Mindy Magyar
Company / School: Rochester Institute of Technology
- 2015
- Paper Type: Case Study
- Education Symposium Theme: Designing the Future of Education
Opening The Mysterious Black Box
Qualitative research fieldwork produces clouds of data. We must ensure that no idea is lost and that comprehensive understanding is produced. While much has been written of research methods and even individual analysis techniques, not much has been written
Author: Katherine Bennett
Company / School: Art Center College of Design
- 2015
- Paper Type: Case Study
- Education Symposium Theme: Designing the Future of Education
Helping Students Navigate Complex Terrain
Design students desire to practice research at an advanced level, which means becoming familiar with the variety of methods in current use. Benchmarking existing techniques, however, reveals at least sixty— too many for beginners to effectively understand. In addition,
Author: Katherine Bennett
Company / School: Art Center College of Design
- 2015
- Paper Type: Case Study
- Education Symposium Theme: Designing the Future of Education
or What Lynda.com Has Taught Me About Teaching
Writing about the future of the classroom for Forbes Magazine in 2010, d-school director George Kembel wrote: “In 2020 we will see an end to the classroom as we know it. The lone professor will be replaced by a
Author: Kevin Henry, IDSA
Company / School: Columbia College Chicago
- 2015
- Education Symposium Theme: Designing the Future of Education
Writing about the future of design education is both challenging, as well as extremely difficult. Predictions can show foresight or folly. This is intended as a position paper, not based on a thorough study of the current curricula and
Author: Stephen Melamed, IDSA
Company / School: University of Illinois at Chicago
- 2015
- Paper Type: Design Letter
- Education Symposium Theme: Designing the Future of Education
Materials and manufacturing processes are critical subjects for an industrial designer. This is because the materials and the methods by which those materials are manipulated and assembled are the industrial designer’s medium. The same way artists, sculptors and craftsmen
Author: Warren Ginn, Sharon Joines
Company / School: North Carolina State University
- 2014
- Paper Type: Academic Research
- Education Symposium Theme: The Exchange
For Effective Design Synthesis
As novice designers, students have a difficult time evaluating large sets of complex data. Some of the difficulties stem from the validity of the collected data itself (i.e. “Garbage in Garbage out”); However, even when the data has been
Author: Richard Fry
Company / School: School of Technology, Brigham Young University
- 2014
- Paper Type: Academic Research
- Education Symposium Theme: The Exchange
Reinforcing Recommendations Through Visual Principles
Despite their expertise in the visual domain, designers face heavy scrutiny from other disciplines based on the intuitive nature with which decisions are often made in design. While more businesses seek competitive advantages through visual appeal, designers still face
Author: Michael Roller
Company / School: University of Cincinnati
- 2014
- Paper Type: Case Study
- Education Symposium Theme: The Exchange
Explorations In Outdoor Products Development
This paper will describe a model for a fourteen week design studio focused on outdoor products for first year undergraduate (B.S. Design) students. The studio followed a traditional development path from research, idea conception, ideation and final refinement and
Author: Elpitha Tsoutsounakis, James Agutter
Company / School: University of Utah
- 2014
- Paper Type: Case Study
- Education Symposium Theme: The Exchange
In an increasingly competitive global economy, companies are motivated to continuously search for innovative products and services. Innovation has been long regarded as the source of profitable growth for companies. Customers can play a pivotal role in innovation through
Author: M. Mobeen Shaukat, Richard Gonzalez, Kazuhiro Saitou
Company / School: King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, University of Michigan,
- 2014
- Paper Type: Case Study
- Education Symposium Theme: The Exchange